Elon Musk took to Twitter Friday night to announce that he would be reinstating the accounts of multiple high-profile journalists who were suspended from the platform Thursday.
On Dec. 15, former MSNBC and ESPN host Keith Olbermann, CNN correspondent Donie O’Sullivan, New York Times reporter Ryan Mac, Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell, Matt Binder of Mashable, freelance journalist Aaron Rupar and Tony Webster were among those suspended from Twitter.
A few hours after the news broke Thursday, Musk began a poll on his account, asking his nearly 122 million followers whether he should “unsuspend accounts who doxxed my exact location in real-time” now or in seven days. More than 58 percent of the 3.7 million people who voted on the poll said now, resulting in Musk reinstating them.
While it was not clear why the accounts were suspended in the first place, some of the journalists had been critical of Musk and tweeted links to a Mastodon social account that tracked Musk’s private jet. “The people have spoken,” he tweeted Friday. “Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now.” Rupar, Mac, Harwell, O’Sullivan, Binder and Webster’s accounts had been restored as of Friday night, but Olbermann’s remained suspended.
“I want to thank everyone for all the support and kind words over the past day and some change,” Rupar tweeted. “I was pretty bummed about getting suspended initially but quickly realized it’d be fine because I’m blessed to have an amazing online community.”
Webster took a more critical approach to his return to the platform and replied to his last tweet before being suspended, which read, “If you aren’t willing to admit that Elon Musk lied to you about his ‘free speech’ goals, you are simply in denial at this point.”
“This was my last tweet before my account was suspended,” his tweet on Friday read. “Needless to say, I was correct. This is not the free speech we were promised. To be clear, there was no ‘doxing’ – even if an impulsive, accountable-to-nobody oligarch said so.”
